On Monday night Bryse Wilson made his major league debut, a 1-0 win over the Pirates. He reminded BJers of two different pitchers: Jaret Wright and Pat Jarvis. 1966 was the 25-year-old Jarvis’ rookie year. The Little Bulldog, as Milo Hamilton called him, didn’t come up until early August (new manager Billy Hitchcock asked Richmond coach Bill Adair if he had any fresh arms… Adair recommended Jarvis; things were simpler then) so I’ll focus today on his second start which led to his first MLB win: August 17th in the Astrodome.

Jarvis gave up only a single and a walk through the first five innings. Dave Giusti matched him giving up an isolated triple and a single. But the Braves got to Giusti in the 6th, scoring 5 runs: the big blow was a bases-loaded double by Rico Carty which, combined with an error by center fielder Ron Davis (the Ron Davis who wasn’t Ike’s dad), plated 3.

Jarvis gave up three straight two-out hits in the bottom of the sixth (the last to Joe Morgan) to score one and end his day. Closer Clay Carroll finished the game from there; 3 1/3 innings is what closers were supposed to do. Final score: 6-1. Interesting fact: all three Astros outfielders made errors in this game which led to unearned runs. The other two errors were from Lee Maye and Rusty Staub.

Jarvis had a great August and September: 6-2, 1 homer allowed in 62.1 innings, 0.930 WHIP, and was then a mainstay of the Braves pitching staff for the next 6 years. Bryse Wilson could do a lot worse than being the second incarnation of Pat Jarvis (13.7 WAR with the Braves ). Other tidbits of Jarvis’ baseball career: he was the first guy Nolan Ryan struck out, and he gave up Ernie Banks’ 500th homer. In politics, well, I’ll obey Mac’s rule and stick to baseball. Those interested in off-the-field activities can consult either the Internet or the Dekalb County Hall of Records.

And now for August 2018. RAJ led off with a homer. Julio was perfect through 4, but a walk led to a run in the 5th. Somewhat inexplicably (to me, but I’m not Clint Hurdle… never have been) starting pitcher Trevor Williams was pulled for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the 6th. That brought Keone Kela in to pitch, who shares initials with Kenshin Kawakami. He did fine. But then the 8th saw Kyle Crick (who would also share initials with Kenshin Kawakami if his last name were spelled differently) confuse the left-handed batters’ box with the plate and load the bases with no outs. Freddie broke the tie with a sac fly.

Brach walked the leadoff hitter and left him stranded at third in the 8th. Venters pitched the 9th: 6-3, K, near-homer, 1-3. (The near-homer was a home run, I think, in every other park in existence.)

I took this picture in May and have held it until I recapped a winning effort by Julio. As much as I would like it to be at the intersection of the Rue de Teheran and the Boulevard Gausman, which would make me incredibly prescient, it is in fact at the intersection of the Rue de Teheran and Boulevard Haussmann. He has now pitched well enough to have a street named after him. Win a couple of World Series games and they’ll rename West Paces Ferry after him.

Paris loves Julio.

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@ Rob from prior thread. I think intelligently managed teams will use any of their players in the way that makes them most effective. If you have a bunch of pitchers that pitch better on 5 days rest then go to a 6-man rotation. If you have 10 3-inning pitchers, go to a bunch of bullpen days. Maybe that’s the real lesson in statistics is that there should be no “normal”.

I loved the idea of using Venters to close tonight. That was a very strong move by Snit seeing as Minter is questionable and Winkler probably needs two days rest after every outing at this point and Brach is much better at setup. Tonight, in my opinion, was out of the box for Snit and appropriate for the situation and well done. Have to give props where props are due. I also like that Venters is not being pigeon-holed as a LOOGY.

I am a long time Camargo fan but there are occasions he has an at bat that drives me crazy. Such was the one tonight in the 9th with two out, two runners on in scoring position and thus a real chance to double or triple our precarious lead. You could legitimately expect maximum concentration and effort, at least, from the hitter.

Instead we got three hurried swings none with any contact. The last was particularly egregious, pulling off, falling back, departing with nary a care to look at him. Casual. Yuk.

Was just coming over to note that Soto and Zimmerman just crushed the Phils with 2 out in the ninth. Soto was literally down to the last strike before he doubled. Then Zim knocked him and himself home.

The scout who signed him for the Braves compared him to Rod Carew, and then to Eric Davis and Robinson Cano. Those players are not overwhelmingly similar to one another. Carew had average and speed, but little power; Davis had power and speed, but low averages; and Cano has average and power, but little speed. If Acuna is actually similar to all of them, then it suggests that there is nearly nothing he cannot do.

The radio announcers talked a lot about Julio’s lack of velocity tonight. They said his fastball was often in the mid 80’s range. I don’t know if we should be concerned for when he faces good hitting teams or relieved that he had good movement on his pitches. Whatever the case, I’ll take it.

@19 It’s not news. Julio is one person who always needs extended rest. Fredi pitched him too much when he was too young. That’s why I would love to see him being traded this offseason because he will not age well despite he is still young. He has definitely peaked…unfortunately…

Braves now lead the NL in runs scored. FG is now catching up and has the Braves with 89 wins and a full 3 game lead on Phils in projections. Third best projected record in NL. The Acuna monster now has 2.6 WAR and is rapidly catching everyone else on the team except Freddie.

We can pretty much win the division by playing .500 or better the rest of the way. A good series against the Marlins has a fair chance of breaking this whole thing wide open. I’d love to have a 5-6 game lead before playing 7 against the Phils.

Since Jonny came sinking home again, hoorah, hoorah,
Since Jonny came sinking home again, hoorah, hoorah,
Since Jonny came sinking home again, the other guys know that it’s the end.
And we loved that day when Jonny came sinking home.

The Red Sox run differential is blowing the doors off of everyone. They’re at +218 with the Yankees being second with +143. They’re in another world.

The Dodgers, who are only 6 games above .500, are first in the NL with +106. Among division leaders, the Cubs are at +94 and we’re 2 behind at +92. Without researching further, that +1 for the Phillies does echo Alex’s point that Kapler is doing a really good job with the Phillies. But I think what’s done is done with trades for both us and the Phillies, so I like us to pull some reinforcements for the stretch run. By simply scouting the statline, I’m just not seeing anyone in the Phillies’ top prospects that could provide a reinforcement the way Touki, Fried, Wilson, and Riley could.

Nothing can vindicate the first half of 2016 IMO. Since they clearly actually care about the product they’re putting on the field now, they’ve stopped the bleeding and have likely gained some of the fans they lost in 2016 back, and will continue to do so if they continue on their present course, but it’s never acceptable to display that level of contempt for your fan base. They used rebuilding as an excuse for what was going on, but even if you’re rebuilding, the first half of 2016 was not necessary.

In my opinion, they only really turned the corner from it like a month ago. If they’d not really done anything at the trade deadline (as it appeared might happen), and this team had slowly sunk to .500 to end the season, we’d still be under the pall of the first half of 2016. It was an utter debacle.

As you might expect against a team this terrible, the pitching match-ups look great against the Fish. 4 against them, 2 against TB at home, Cubs makeup at home, then 3 at home against Pittsburgh. That’s 10 games that are very manageable. Then 3 home against Boston and 3 @ Arizona. That part’s not great.

I love this Braves team, and I like their chances of winning the division. But the Phightins are anything but out of it. Just because they have lost a few in a row, including last night in demoralizing fashion, tells us next to nothing about what will happen over the next five and a half weeks. It seems like ancient history after the last three in Pittsburgh, but the Braves just got swept last weekend, including dropping two in demoralizing fashion.

Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher. The Phils have Aaron Nola on the mound today (the good news is the gnats have Scherzer).

This race will come down to those seven games at the end of September. I suspect the two teams will be pretty close at that point. That’s going to be some exciting baseball.

@38 The organization can be vindicated, but some of the people involved in that mess probably not. I think about the moves made by Hart/Coppolella and come to the conclusion that these guys were crazy. Yeah, Coppolella made some decent trades, but I’m pretty sure that the team is, like, actually worse off as a result of him. They are winning this year in spite of that man and will have to continue to do so, yes?

Now, I think the organization has been on a right path going back to well before the trade deadline. They signed a quality GM in AA. They’ve had an increased interest in maintaining the team by going through the fuss of a new stadium and building up The Battery. It at least shows that the guys at the top of the front office recognize the team needs more revenue. Frankly, everyone I’ve talked to around Huntsville about the Braves tells me I have got to get to SunTrust sooner than later and… plan to spend a whole day there — that it’s worth it!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Phillies took a nose dive. They’ve really made the most of their opportunities to win, but unless they start outscoring their opponents one would have to think that they will run into a wall.

Is it wrong to be potentially more worried about the Nats still? I know it’s irrational but until they are mathematically eliminated, you are still talking about a much better team on paper than the Phillies.

Harper, Turner, Rendon, Soto, Zimmerman not to mention Scherzer. I guess they really don’t have the pitching to put together a sustained run and the clubhouse seems like a mess, but they still make me slightly nervous.

I’m hopeful that this team can finish strong and wind up with about 91 wins (20-16 the rest of the way would do that). But I’m nervous about closing out 15-21 ish which would be 86-76. Phillies only have to go 18-18 in that scenario and even Washington only has to go 22-13.

@38–thanks, Rob, for reminding us of that great article by Alex. I’m not interested in re-litigating the merits or the process of the rebuild. But it is very nice to be reminded of how much I’m enjoying this magical season, especially compared to the misery of a couple of years ago.
As I told Alex then, I’m a Braves lifer from the beginning, so like many of us older Braves fans, I’ve been through lots of misery over the years, including vast swaths of the 70s and 80s. That doesn’t mean I grew to like it, or even got used to it.
On the other hand, being in the thick of a pennant race in September is about as good as it gets for a baseball fan.

Last night was the Braves 126th game of the 2018 campaign. The win, along with Philadelphia’s collapse in Washington, sent them to 71-55 and put them up 3 games in their division.

The 1991 Braves played their 126th game on August 28th (the season started later then.) They were in the middle of a seven game home stand which they opened on August 23. Over the next three days, Atlanta dropped 2 of 3 to the that season’s Phillies squad.

Happily, the Dodgers fared even worse on their trip into St. Louis, getting swept by the Cards. By the end of the weekend, LA had seen Atlanta chip a game and a half off of their lead in the division (Thursday was a travel day for the Dogs) and led by a single game.

LA split their next two games, a short trip into Wrigley to face the Cubs. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, the Braves swept a similarly short two game set against the Expos. The two clubs ended the night of August 27 tied atop the NL West at 69-56.

Down in Atlanta, New York followed the Expos into town for game 126. Tom Glavine toed the rubber against the Mets’ Frank Viola. The Mets jumped out to an early 1-0 lead. A 2-out Chuck Carr single, combined with a Lonnie Smith throwing error, pushing Kevin Elster home. Carr was out at second, trying to advance on the error, to end the threat.

The Braves couldn’t get much of anything going against Viola until the fifth. Jeff Blauser led off with a walk, and Greg Olsen doubled him home. Mark Lemke bunted Olsen to third. Tom Glavine helped his own cause with an RBI single, giving the Braves their first lead of the game. Lonnie Smith struck out swinging, and Viola picked Glavine off to end the inning at 2-1.

Terry Pendleton, Ron Gant and Brian Hunter would combine to push across a third run in the sixth, but it was superfluous. Staked to his lead, Glavine would not give up another hit on the day.

Out west, the Pirates came a’visiting Chavez Ravine. In what was, for the era, a bit of a slugfest, the Buccos jumped out to a 4-1 lead, which you expected to hold up. But Doug Drabek tired in the 8th. A lead off double and an infield single set the stage for Brett Butler’s game tying 3-run shot.

But Dodgers closer Roger McDowell didn’t have it that night. Two singles, a Jay Bell sac bunt, an intentional walk brought Bobby Bonilla to the plate with the bases juiced. Bonilla worked a 5-pitch walk off of Jay Howell, Barry Bonds followed with a loud sac fly to deep left, and the Dodgers went quietly against Stan Belinda in their half. Buccos 6, Dodgers 4.

At the end of the night’s action, the NL West standings stood at:

Atlanta Braves 70-56 —
LA Dodgers 69-57 1

It was the Braves first outright lead in the division since May 13. The two teams would go on to battle it out to the last series, exchanging the tops spot nine times in the last month.

Most of the time I can kind of sort of see how they convince themselves it shouldn’t be overturned if you’re looking at it in a dumb umpire’s union sort of way. I can also generally tell which ones that fans and broadcasters are just absolutely barking up the wrong tree on, even if there’s an angle where it looks like the call may be wrong (the play at the plate the other night was one of those…no chance they were ever overturning that, even as Pirates fans were busy cheering replay angles in the stadium).

But that Markakis ball was as clear as anything you’ll ever see. Literally, a giant chunk of white paint shot up into the air after the ball hit the ground. There is a 0.0 percent chance that that ball was foul.

It has officially reached the level of performance art.

And poor Joe had a coronary trying not to say something that would get him fired…heh.

A brief internet search has turned up nothing. One of the articles I just skimmed through did mention that he got some kind of settlement from the Braves when he resigned, so he has money. (And on a side note, perhaps the Braves should’ve waited until MLB banned him for life to push him out…I’m guessing they just wanted him gone, though.)

Everything else I read was speculative stuff about what he could do, but that was all from late 2017. Nothing recently about what he is doing.

I seem to remember some concern about Acuna’s maturity at the beginning of the year. From all I’ve seen he’s conducted himself all year in a very professional manner. He could have easily charged the mound on the last hbp, but he showed remarkable restraint.

Thank God we got out of the intentional beanball inning with no runs, brawls or ejections. I was pretty sure Sean was gonna give up a grand slam and let them back into the game there, but he worked around it.

I understand the desire, perhaps even the need, to plunk someone, after Ronald’s HBP. But you’ve got to be strategic. Why do it after there is already someone on base? Newk managed to get out of that inning, but it could have gotten ugly in a hurry once the bases were loaded.

I said it a couple weeks ago when he got us out of a game-breaking inning against the Nationals: If Luke Jackson can harness that breaking ball (and he’s getting better at it), he’ll move up the bullpen pecking order real quick. That thing is nasty!

By the way, Snit’s bullpen management is potentially at its worst during blowouts, when he insists on using a guy who could potentially be counted on to get important outs in a close game when scrubs are available, and you can see through time to three days in the future when he’s sitting that guy because of overuse and we’re forced to use Sam freaking Freeman in a tie game in the eighth inning.

Anderson made no attempt to get out of the way. If Biddle would have gotten thrown out for that it would have been a travesty. The only unsportsmanlike thing that was done was throwing his bat away like he had something to complain about.

T Sanderling is, I feel, a finer conductor than his brother and half-brother. Being a cello soloist surely gives him some insight into working with musicians? I saw him conduct in Berlin in the smaller hall at the Philharmonie many years ago and father Kurt (around 93) was watching on with evident interest and presumably gave advice. Kurt Sanderling”s Schumann 4 with the Halle in the 70s (less so with the BBC Phil at the Proms but I still cherish the dvd souvenir of that) was one of the greatest performances I have heard of any symphony; a legacy to match the Jarvis.

If you let Teheran eat innings the first few months and stick with the plan to provide an extra day of rest whenever possible, you're less likely to end up in a position where you may need to limit the younger arms down the stretch